Friday, November 27, 2015

Most of our Black Friday deals are listed below and most run through until Cyber Monday, November 30th, but for all the details and some more items as well, please check out our December PDF newsletter, sent out a few days early…

Update: We now have the new 35mm f/2 (black version) in stock! The silver model will be coming in a week or so. I'll be receiving my own personal one within the next week too and I'll be doing some testing and reporting on the quality of a production version of this new lens soon. See the rest of this blog entry for some preliminiary testing notes.

Announcement & Initial Testing Notes

[October 21, 2015]: Today, Fujifilm took the wraps off a couple of new items. First off, let's talk about their new, compact 50mm equivalent normal prime lens, the Fujinon XF 35mm f/2.0R WR. You can see it above in the lineup, starting on the left with the 23mm f/1.4, then the existing 35mm f/1.4, the new 35mm f/2 and then the 18-55mm kit zoom (click the image for a larger view). As you can see, the lens is a fair bit smaller than the current 35mm f/1.4.

The new 35mm f/2 is due to be available for sale on November 14th at a price of $499 CDN. The lens will come with a small, 43mm thread-on lens hood and you can use the standard lens cap with it. There will also be an optional bayonet metal lens hood for an estimated $59.95. This hood is tapered and "vented" with slots cut in to allow for better optical VF viewing with the X-Pro1, and presumably, future models with a similar rangefinder-style Hybrid Multi Viewfinder. Despite its tapered design, thankfully it will still allow for use of the supplied, normal snap on lens cap, which is something you cannot do with the rectangular metal hood on the 35mm f/1.4. Not sure yet if the hood can be reverse mounted though? Here is a shot of the optional hood…

The lens will be available in both black and silver, however the hood seems to be available in black only. We are taking preorders on this lens, so contact us if you'd like to order one!

Here is a photo of the black and silver versions, side by side (again, click for a larger view) which might help you decide which one to preorder…

I had a chance to test out a prototype 35mm last week and considering it was optically not a final version, I was still impressed with its image quality.